How can I find out the URL for a website's search engine?

[kestrell]

I'm learning about some of the features in the Edge browser, and one is that you can enter the search engine for a website, such as Amazon or Audible, and then assign it an abbreviation and search it from the address bar.

For example, I want to find out the url for the simple keyword search on Bookshare.org.

Once I have the url, I can enter it in Edge's search engine settings, assign it an abbreviation such as bk, and then, when I want to use the simple keyword search on Bookshare, I can just press control+l to open the address bar in Edge and type something like this:
bk beowulf

and Edge will return results from Bookshare that match beowulf.

The stumper is that that simple keyword search appears on every page of the Bookshare website and, when I use control+u to view the code on a Bookshare webpage, it's all scripts and divs and nothing that looks like a url for the keyword search.

The person giving the tutorial made this sound as if it would be obvious, but didn't provide any tips for how to find out what that url might be.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Damn

I do know that the Safari version of this comes with a very unintuitive label: "quick website search". When that's on, Safari remembers every site on which I've used the site's own search (and lists those sites under the on/off setting). So on my iCloud account,* I've got Bookshare, Dreamwidth, Amazon. I just type "Bookshare $String" in the address bar to search for reading.

* AppleID plus iCloud means my Safari settings sync among Mac, iPad, iPhone.

[kestrell]

Cool! You have an iPad?

Edge has come a long way during 2020, and I also have to catch up on all the functionality of MS Office 365 and One Drive: I haven't even begun looking at syncing my devices.

[jesse_the_k]

This extension lacks reviews, but it seems to do what you want

https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/such2-search/bfdabofbhmhbeednheihiaildefeogjn

[kestrell]

Cool! I put that in my Edge notes.

On another note: yesterday afternoon I took in a Bookshare webinar on creating accessible epub documents, and it was really inspiring! I've kind of paid attentioin to epub since it debuted, but only half-heartedly, because it doesn't usually work on the special ebook readers and not many ebook sources were supporting it. Now it looks as if Bookshare is really promoting it and, since they have such an influence on accessibility of educational materials, it looks as if it is finally becoming more widely available as a major format.

Also, now I can do more reading with my iPhone and my Kindle, which don't have the format restrictions special ebook readers have imposed on them.

I'll share the notes and resources when I finish typing up/deciphering my notes.

[siderea]

You're looking for whatever shows up in the Location Bar after you have performed a search.

So, when you go to bookshare.org and search on "chomsky" what comes up in the URL bar is:

https://www.bookshare.org/search?keyword=chomsky

Remove the word you searched on, and that's the URL you want. In this case

https://www.bookshare.org/search?keyword=

is probably the URL the browser needs for this functionality. Be careful not to leave out that terminal equal sign, it's not optional.

[kestrell]

Cool! Thanks!